


From the Embers

by distractionpie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Close Relationship - Gen or Romantic Unspecified, Gen, JeanMarco Week, M/M, Post-Canon, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24855106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: As the fire dies, Jean steps towards a future.
Relationships: Marco Bott & Jean Kirstein, Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: JeanMarco Week 2020





	From the Embers

The flames are more red than gold now, flickering low. Soon there’ll be nothing left but embers and people are already beginning to drift away but Jean still stands close, feeling none of the heat as the smoke rushes through him.

The war is nearly over, he’s sure of it, they all are. There's a truce being negotiated back in the capital city and what the scouts are fighting now are not battles but skirmishes, cleaning up the last few holdouts who’ll accept no peace but the destruction of the Eldian devils they fear too deeply to try and understand.

“At least it was quick,” he muses. It’s slim consolation for such an unnecessary death, but there’s something neater about not seeing it coming, having no time to beg or regret.

“It was brave.” The voice from beside him sounds far surer than Jean feels. “Those children were innocent, saving them is what we all fought for.”

But they shouldn’t have needed saving in the first place. They wouldn’t have been caught in a battle if the Eldians hadn’t been there to work the locals into a fervour of pointless violence trying to protect their home from the perceived invaders.

“What now?” he asks. Orders. That’s what has got him through the past few years. Armin and Erwin and Hange shouldering the burden of the big choices so that Jean could make field calls and tell himself that the blood wasn’t on his hands because he’d just been following the plan. “Do we stay, or is there...?”

Is there something for him to do? Some purpose that will give meaning to all this? Or will it simply all be over when the last of the embers fades out?

“There aren’t rules. I stayed because of you, others move on. It’s only been a few hours, you can take some time to process.”

Because of him?

Half from instinct half from dread, Jean’s hand falls to his pocket, which for many long years had held half his heart in a shard plucked from a pyre so like the one before him. “Did I...?”

A warm hand wraps around his own, drawing it away from the grim memento’s resting place.

“The dead aren’t bound to their bones, Jean,” Marco says. “I stayed with you because I wanted to. Just like you chose where you go now.”

Finally pulling his eyes away from where what’s left of his body burns, Jean turns to Marco, gaze settling on a face he’s missed the sight of for so long, grown beyond the years he’d lived. Marco has waited because he’d wanted to watch over Jean, but that’s still so many long years of war and horror that he’s had to helplessly endure.

“You chose,” he said. Marco knows this after-world, has surely had time to think about what else he wants, whereas Jean knows if it’s left to him he’ll stand by the scouts because they’re all he knows, all he thought he had left with his home in pieces behind him and the world outside leveled against them in war.

“Jean...”

“Marco, please. I’ve been choosing the past few years, and look where it led me,” Jean points out. He’d been trying to do right and he believes in the good he achieved but there’d been so many mistakes and it's hard to look at where he’s ended up and not feel like he should have done better. “I’ve dragged you through this fight, now you should get to choose something. Go somewhere that makes you happy.”

“I was always happy as long as you were there. And honestly?” Marco says, eyes twinkling in the firelight. “After watching for this long, I think it would drive me mad not to know how it ends. Let's watch our friends live.”

He tugs Jean’s hand, pulling him close enough that their shoulders bump, reassuringly solid even as embers drift through their ghostly forms.

The war’s not over yet, but they’ll see the last of it together, like they’d always meant to.


End file.
